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Thursday, October 03, 2013

Tanzania: 6 days to departure

This is my second week of taking my once a week malaria meds. I did not have a reaction to it last Thursday but Monday night I started getting stomach pain (one of the side effects) that lasted till this morning. I don't know what taused the pain but it may have been the meds. Perhaps it worked out of my body by this morning only to have to start another pill tonight.

I packed almost all of my gear into my duffel bag which now weighs 25 pounds and it barely fit and that's without a sleeping bag and mat. I brought up my large suitcase and of course the packed duffel bag does not fit into the suitcase. I also have a separate bag for my safari and Zanzibar which weighs 15 lbs. I'm now up to 40 lbs.

I have one of two options: 1) I get a larger suitcase (which I have) to put the packed duffel bag and my safari bag into; 2) I empty everything from the plastic bags that are now in the duffel bag and the safari bag, pack everything into the suitcase and re-pack my gear into the duffel bag when I get to Kilimanjaro.

I am limited to 50 lbs total weight so the larger suitcase cannot exceed that weight anyway. How come I didn't read about this on a single blog post or climb website? I must have watched at least 2 dozen YouTube videos as well but nowhere does anyone say how to get all your gear to pack small enough and limit all of it to 50 lbs.

Trent offered to lend me a down-filled sleeping bag (I was going to rent one in Kilimanjaro but I am not feeling confident about the ability of the sleepign bags there to keep me warm). Tomorrow I'm going to try the larger suitcase and pack all my stuff into it and hope that it doesn't exceed 50 pounds. Wish me luck or I'll be wearing one set of clothes for 8 days! No. No. No. No. No. That is not even a possibility. I'll make it fit.